IG: "stimulus" rural broadband push had no mechanism to measure outcome

BIP - Broadband Initiatives Program
RUS - Rural Utility Service
BCAS - Broadband Collection and Analysis System

This is from the Aug 2013 IG Report. So here we are, years after the initial "stimulus" and nobody knows if this rural broadband money was effectively spent or not.

Billions were tossed around without measuring how many people actually benefited (from p.13 of PDF)

Finding 1: Performance Measures Do Not Effectively Show BIP Outcomes

While BIP primarily financed last mile projects that provide service to end-users, such as households and businesses, we found that RUS does not have adequate controls to measure and transparently report how effectively BIP is meeting its subscribership goals. Specifically, RUS does not have controls in place to measure how many BIP subscribers are in rural areas and were previously unserved or underserved or to measure performance (subscribership) of BIP projects on an individual basis. Second, RUS does not have adequate controls in place to ensure that awardees submit reliable performance data or to compare actual performance to projected results. This occurred because RUS did not anticipate the need to report on actual rural subscribership. RUS is also hesitant to invest its limited resources in further revising its information management systems, policies, and procedures for BIP—a one-time program. OIG recognizes the consideration of investing additional limited resources for a one-time program. However, without these controls in place, there is less assurance that BIP awards helped accomplish the goals of the Recovery Act by providing broadband to rural residents who would not otherwise have sufficient access to this service

While there undoubtedly were many underserved rural customers, there would also be a number of them who already went with alternatives like Hughes sat internet service and DirectTV internet/VoIP. In fact, for the remotest of the rural areas, where there's not even land line phone service, simply giving people the Hughes/DirectTV sat packages would be far more cost effective and dramatically faster to install than running hundreds/thousands of miles of cable/fiber based solutions.

With no means to establish the effectiveness at the subscriber level, you'll probably not be surprised to find out there was no means to establish effectiveness at the provider/installer level either.

RUS established a goal for BIP projects to provide new or improved broadband service to 359,450 subscribers. However, we found issues with how RUS collected data regarding this performance measure and how RUS
reported on the program outcomes.

...We found that RUS controls did not ensure awardee-reported BIP performance data distinguished between individual awards, rural and nonrural subscribers, or subscribers’ previous status (unserved, underserved, or other), or that the data were reliable....

...First, we found that the data captured in BCAS did not provide key information necessary to determine project performance. Specifically, while awardees quarterly report on the number of “new” and “improved” BIP subscribers, they are not asked to distinguish whether subscribers are rural or nonrural, so the number of rural subscribers benefiting from BIP projects
cannot be determined from the data, and there is no explanation as to how the “new” and “improved” categories correlate to subscribers who were previously
unserved or underserved...

posted by Purp at 11:28 AM

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